Wives & Daughters

What can I say about American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, the novel that isn't-a-portrait-of-Laura-Bush-but-really-kind-of-is that hasn't been said already? I hate the Bush administration and everything it stands for and I've never been an admirer of Mrs Bush, but I nevertheless loved this book. I think it's because Sittenfeld writes so empathetically in the voice of a woman whose lifestyle and choice of husband few of us are ever likely to have much in common with. Alice Blackwell née Lindgren is presented as a sensitive, bookish child and teenager, whose life is transformed when she kills a classmate whom she has a crush on in a car accident, starts an affair with his dissolute brother and has an illegal abortion arranged by her (lesbian) grandmother. The often seedy side of life that we never hear about in relation to the (bloody) American Dream. She settles into a life as a spinster-ish elementary school librarian and unexpectedly falls in love with the charming ne'er-do-well son of the richest family in the state. I'm not sure if I can fully believe that Laura Bush is a secret liberal, but I could believe it of Alice Blackwell. I think it's important to separate the two. I like the cover, which is exactly how I imagine Alice to look, but I don't think she rides a bicycle once in the novel and the landscape looks far more Little House on the Prairie than small town Wisconsin...

At Mrs's Lippincote's, the first novel by Elizabeth Taylor is a finely written novel, but not one that really resonated with me. Although it is told from several different points of view, I found it difficult to really connect with any of them. My favourite character was precocious young Brontë-obsessed Oliver- I have to admit that I was a bit like that when I was younger. I was also ambivalent towards Angel, so I wonder what it is that's preventing me with connecting with a writer who, going by my usual tastes and preferences, I ought to love. I have a feeling Taylor is a writer who grows on you and I'm certainly not giving up.

I absolutely loved Singled Out: How Two Million Women Survived Without Men after the First World War by Virginia Nicholson, the best non-fiction work I've read in goodness knows how long. This is my great-grandmother's generation- she was one of four sisters born in the 1880s and 90s and she was the only one who ever married (one lived with her lover for years but never married him, another was a fairly well-known artist in lesbian Jewish avant-garde circles and I don't know anything about the fourth) and that was to her cousin. I loved just how readable, sympathetic and moving this book was, the analysis is sensitive and spot-on and the case studies are fascinating. They include the campaigner Florence White (not the same Florence White of Good Things In England fame) and her sister Annie who campaigned for spinters' rights and set up the National Spinsters Pensions Association, Gertrude Maclean who founded the Universal Aunts agency (a fantastic enterprise- women could finally get paid for something that had always been taken for granted), Caroline Haslett, the first director of the Electrical Association for Women (who was cremated by electricity- I love it), lady's maid Rose Harrison who when asked what she'd do if she could live again replied, "I would live my life over again," and countless others. Winifred Holtby's books have also risen rapidly to the top of my TBR pile. Nicholson isn't afraid to take on questions that are still controversial in the C21, such as whether it's possible to be happy and fulfilled without getting married and having children. If these extraordinary women are anything to go by, the answer should be a resounding yes. The First World War was undoubtedly a tragedy of immeasurable proportions that caused all sorts of damage and it's fair to mourn for a 'lost generation,' but it is easy to romanticise what might have been. If it hadn't happened, expectations of women's lives might have remained based on getting married and having babies. I wish my girlfriends and acquaintances who do nothing but whine about their boyfriends would read this book. It puts so many things into perspective.

On the silver screen, I enjoyed An Education, based on Lynn Barber's memoir of coming of age in 1960s suburbia, despite feeling squeamish at the love scenes. It's really scary how Jenny/Lynn's parents encouraged the relationship. For me, the real treat was seeing a host of fabulous semi-obscure British actresses sharing the screen. As many have already commented, Carey Mulligan is wonderful as Jenny with an extraordinary way of appearing very young and older than her years at the same time, Olivia Williams (an actress I absolutely adore) as her English teacher Miss Stubbs (the scene in her flat at the end was beautiful), Rosamund Pike as ditzy blonde amoral trophy girlfriend Helen and Kate Duchene (Miss Hardbroom on The Worst Witch- my favourite TV show when I was 10) as the Latin teacher (I'd recognise that voice anywhere). There's also a cameo from not-so obscure but always brilliant Emma Thompson as an unpleasant anti-semitic headmistress. The period details are immaculate and the ending somehow seemed perfect.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

It might be bit of an exaggeration to call this latest offering from the Potter franchise God awful, but there was very little about it that I actually liked. The adult actors really are the saving grace. Order of the Phoenix was my favourite of the movies so far because although it was inevitably heavily condensed, it had a screenplay that actually made sense, and I thought that the three leads were getting better.  With this, however, it didn't feel as if a whole lot actually happened, the bad acting was in full flow, and it all felt very generic, as if we'd seen it all before. It seems as if every installment is hailed as the "darkest yet," and I find that such labels have become pretty meaningless.

It was a real disappointment not to have the brilliant first chapter from the book ("The Other Minister") dramatized, as that's such a delightfully written scene that sets up the predicament beautifully (instead we get Bellatrix and the Carrows speeding through London destroying various landmarks), and the scene where Dumbledore collects Harry at the Dursleys' (no one can be as scathing as Dumbledore whilst being impeccably polite). Instead he preserves Harry's purity from a predatory waitress, the first implication that hormones are out of control in this movie. There was far too much emphasis on adolescent angst and not enough on the actual story. Even Quidditch becomes a game of sexual power in which Ron and McLaggen contest their masculinity for mating rights with Hermione (unless that's just my English student mind in overload).

Daniel Radcliffe will never be Harry to me and he delivers a very smug portrayal (I found myself rooting for Draco on several occasions- at least Tom Felton can act). The Harry/Ginny romance is horribly contrived (even worse than in the books) Rupert Grint gives an incredibly irritating, unfunny performance (he was an endearing child, what happened?) and Emma Watson has nothing to do except mope over Ron. I've always been a bit ambivalent towards Luna on page (I find her a bit quirky for the sake of being quirky), but at least she has a personality, unlike our trio. I wanted to slap Lavender Brown every time she appeared. Thank goodness for Michael Gambon for keeping sentimentality in check. I haven't always been a huge fan of his performance as Dumbledore (though I do think he's one of this country's finest actors who's played many far more important and difficult roles than Dumbledore), but I thought he nailed it here. He shows how Dumbledore really is a force to be reckoned with (I'm not sure if Richard Harris, God rest his soul, would have pulled that off). Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman are impeccable as always with what they have to work with, but Rickman in particular was short-changed, considering the importance of Snape's role (they didn't make anything of his promotion to Defense Against the Dark Arts) to the eventual outcome. I enjoyed Jim Broadbent's Slughorn (even though Desmond Barrit would have been perfect), who I think is a rather underrated character. He shows that it is possible to be a Slytherin (something which they didn't even mention), and still have a good heart. In fact, properly evil Slytherins are probably in a rather small minority; they're just the ones who get all the attention.

I know how cranky this all sounds, but it certainly doesn't inspire me to want to pay twice for Deathly Hallows. Less emphasis on flashy effects and more on dialogue (they managed to forget two of the best lines in the entire saga- Harry telling Scrimegeour that he's Dumbledore's man through and through and Snape's "DON'T CALL ME COWARD!") and character development would be nice.

Coco avant Chanel

Coco avant Chanel is an utterly leaden, dead weight of a movie. Coming out of the cinema, all I could think was, "If Coco Chanel's early life was really that boring, why bother making a movie about it?" The plot is extremely thin- she and her sister are abandoned in an orphanage by their father, they become cafe singers, her sister becomes a mistress to a count and Coco gets involved in a sort of menage a trois with two rich men (one of whom is supposedly the love of her life- he's English and called Boy. How could he be anything other than a cad?). There's lots of tedious too-ing and fro-ing that seems to go on forever, she trims a few hats and commissions a little black dress and then suddenly has her own fashion house. It's so utterly unconvincing. The normally cute as a button Audrey Tatou bears a remarkable resemblance to the real Chanel, but even she's unable to breathe any life into this anemic film.

I happen to have quite a lot of respect for courtesans (Madame Armfeldt in Sondheim's A Little Night Music being a favourite character of mine). Many were shrewd businesswomen who knew exactly what they were doing, but this film tries to portray Chanel as an emancipated woman who succeeded independently against a male dominated society when that wasn't really the case. She may have never married (as the postscript informs us as if that's the most important detail about her life), but she was completely dependent on her lovers' money to get started. While I don't blame her for that, she was far from being sexually or financially liberated. Everybody seems to love a rags to riches story, regardless of the implications...

Coco during Chanel would have been more interesting. Quite possibly the most pointless film I've ever seen (thank goodness it was free with a Sunday Times preview!).